How to Be a Better Teacher

You can’t teach what you don’t know. Practice every day. Pay attention to the effects of your practice on your own body and mind. Deepen your awareness. Get intimately familiar with any pose or technique that you want to teach to your students.

Step 2: Modify

Study the poses with your students’ needs in mind. If they have limited mobility, tightness, hyper-flexibility, injuries or illness, look for ways to make the poses’ effects accessible despite those challenges. Use all the tools and props at your disposal if it helps the student.

Step 3: Learn from Others

Keep going to other yoga classes whenever you can. If you can’t make it to class (i.e. it’s too damn cold outside and you refuse to leave the house) study what other teachers have to say in books, blog posts, magazine articles and online videos. However you do it, just keep learning.

Step 4: Branch Out

Do something besides yoga. Especially if you’re a full-time yoga teacher, it’s easy to get in a rut of doing the same thing over and over again. Go roller skating, take a jog, try an aerobics or spin class. Challenge your body in a different way and then try your practice again. Notice how this changes your practice, and incorporate that knowledge into your class.

Step 5: Listen

When students ask questions or give you feedback, they’re letting you know what they need. They may remember pieces of breath work from previous classes, or they might not understand the alignment of the hips in a certain pose. The feedback they give you can tell you where they’re experiencing challenges, where they’d like to learn more, and how you can give more clear and helpful instructions.

Step 6: Honor the Student

Being a yoga teacher doesn’t mean you’re more advanced than the student. It just means that you have a certain skill set you can share. Honor the students’ unique experience and personal wisdom, and encourage them to honor the same in themselves. The true teacher is the inner guru, and it’s your job to help them find it within themselves.